Comments

Comment by Fqubed

I love the smell of napalm in the morning

Smells like... Victory

Apocalypse Now, Quite fitting.

Comment by ILovePunctuation

The Saronite Animus will spawn once 8 Saronite Vapors are up at the same time. He's got 8 million health on heroic and applies a debuff to the raid that increases shadow damage taken by 10% every 2 seconds.

Comment by Maliander

Kill General Vezax on the hard mode on heroic dificulty.

Vezax spawns a total of 6 Saronite Crystals over time. Killing these Saronite Crystals creates Saronite Vapors on the ground, which allow casters standing in them to regain mana to counter the effects of the permanently active Aura of Despair.If no Crystals are destroyed, eventually 6 Crystals will be alive at the same time. These Crystals then merge to form the the add Saronite Animus. This add casts the stacking damaging debuff Profound Darkness on the raid and Vezax gains the immunity buff Void Barrier as long as this add is alive and stops casting Searing Flames.

Lack of mana regeneration means that caster DPS without functioning mana-regaining mechanics will have to make extensive use of the Shadow Crash buff and resort to wanding when not buffed. Healers will have to be very conservative with their mana to ensure they have enough left at the end to heal the massive AoE damage from the Saronite Animus.

This achievement requires the raid to kill this add before killing Vezax. Since Vezax is invulnerable as long as the add is alive, this seems like a sensible approach once the Saronite Animus has spawned. The entire raid being hit by increasing AoE damage while healers are running on fumes also makes it advisable to kill the Saronite Animus in a timely manner. Killing any Crystals before the 6th is spawned will make sure the Saronite Animus never spawns, as will killing Vezax before the 6th Crystal has spawned (though it is not likely this is possible).

Comment by elsydeon

Profound Darkness

Does this mean the Saronite Animus is going to be a naked chick with green hair?

Comment by Evilhealbot

First done by Irae AoD of Mug'Thol-EU.

Comment by ScarletRogue

Having had some experience with General Vezax, the 8th crystal will spawn likely when Vezax is almost dead. This will not always be the case, depending on your DPS, but Vezax will get low, and then the animus will spawn, you'll have to kill it and then the boss will already be low enough to finish off. Mana regen is going to be the only issue for the hard mode.

Comment by Voljaa

4.4k in a 10man raid is extreme in any single target situation - especially in a 10 minute fight without 20% haste from WF for your melee. Caster stacking seems like the way to go here which is strange concidering I'm sure Blizzard said raid stacking being a big no-no for WotLK.

Comment by Masadist

4.4k in a 10man raid is extreme in any single target situation - especially in a 10 minute fight without 20% haste from WF for your melee. Caster stacking seems like the way to go here which is strange concidering I'm sure Blizzard said raid stacking being a big no-no for WotLK.

Umm, any special reason why not to bring enhancement shaman in raid?We are topping the damagemeters, improved Stormstrike returns mana with every hit and also our shamanistic rage works like a charm in here.

Actually, if healers are running low on mana, I usually help with healing, since I'm the only one in raid that really doesn't have problems with mana.

Comment by Saime

Umm, any special reason why not to bring enhancement shaman in raid?We are topping the damagemeters, improved Stormstrike returns mana with every hit and also our shamanistic rage works like a charm in here.

Comment by darknesscalls

When the add is spawned, he literally spams Profound Darkness every few seconds. Thus you need to burn him down ASAP with the help of Bloodlust and cooldowns.

After the add dies, the debuff persists for some time. So you still need to avoid the shadow crashes, or you will most likely get one shot by them.

Comment by Darkroot

On heroic, Profound Darkness is cast every 2 seconds.

Comment by devildrlver

so is this possible?dps would have to take NO damage, so moving from shadow crash, all searing flames interrupted so literally only the 1 tank is taking damage.and only like 1-2 healers at a time healing

Comment by tyler2k

Everything that you've stated is everything that already should be done in non-hard mode.

People should be moving out of shadow crash as it knocks them away and requires healers to switch to them, the major difference now is that they can get one shotted

All searing flames must be interrupted since the debuff he leaves can allow him to one shot the tank

There is only one tank (anyway) as the boss is immune to taunt, losing the tank is catastrophic

Mana conservation is always key as the clumping of healers increases the chances of life drain on one of them

Comment by crank88

Comment by Urden

Does he only spawn 8 Vapors? Maybe if you kill a few he will still keep spawning them until Animus comes out.

Can the raid say kill the 5th vapor to regen some mana, leaving 4 up, then kill the 8th vapor leaving 7 up, then when the eighth spawns, Animus would appear?

Comment by Nanika

No, you cannot kill any vapors at all. Or else the entire point of the achievement would be null. That's why it's hard.

Unlike on 10man, Vezax does NOT stop casting Searing Flames when the Animus is up. Due to the DPS requirements however, your two interrupters will need to trade off on him, switching to the Animus while waiting for the other person to interrupt, and then switch back to wait for their turn. Otherwise, given the average gear level of most guilds that will be doing this, I don't think the raid will have the DPS necessary to do this all within the enrage timer. Obviously, such limitations would become more forgiving as your guild continues to get more gear.

Provided everyone in the raid is not retarded (which can be a tall order, as we all know), and doesn't get Shadow Crashed, most of your healers can just save their mana for the crazy burn phase where the raid is getting aoe'd. Resto druids can melee and heal on Omen of Clarity procs.

Pre-3.2 at least, Holy Nova glyph is pretty OP for this achievement.

Comment by Pounced

Strategy :

First of all, make sure your raid is absolutely geared to the teeth. Fairly obvious, but this is not something you can get lucky with and keep bashing at and hope RNG will win it for you, like Thorim hard mode.

Thirdly : Make sure your raid knows how to position itself. I've made a very simple map to display how it should be done.LinkyThe large black dot represents where Vezax should be tanked.Yellow = HealersRed = TankLarge blue = Casters, ranged.Purple = Melee DPSGreen = Where the Saronite Animus will spawn. It should be dragged immediately next to the Vezax tank.Smaller blue are saronite vapors (which should not be killed!)Smaller black represent totems that should be placed in a specific spot to help casters get back into position with ease.

Now, for the fight itself (Healer PoV) : This starts out like every other Vezax kill, except, you only get one mana bar. This means every single cast you use is precious and cannot be neglected.Your casters and range DPS must ensure they do not take any unnecessary damage whatsoever from a shadow crash or life leech. Make sure you are announcing loudly and clearly and move instantly for every incoming shadow crash.If the raid is positioned as appeared in the picture, the shadow crash should be landing in the exact same spot every time.Mages can iceblock the life leech, anyone else should simply run backwards towards the wall.They must also make sure they do not use any mana on a cast whatsoever outside of a shadow crash.All priests, mages, and warlocks should be wanding when not in a shadow crash. All holy/discipline priests should be wanding when not healing.Having a Lightwell setup next to the range will help for the clumsy or the ones hit by life leech.

Melee should have a strict set rotation for interrupting Searing Flames. On normal mode with enough luck from a geared tank you could survive it, but that raid damage is very important to avoid with only one mana bar.

There should be only one or two healers healing the Vezax tank. This is to ensure your strongest raid healers will have enough mana to get through the Saronite Animus.We use a restoration shaman and discipline priest. If your tank cannot survive with only two healers, then your raid needs better gear before you attempt this.

Do not use heroism/bloodlust for Vezax. You will need it for the Saronite Animus.After about 4 minutes into the fight, the saronite animus will spawn. It should be tanked next to the Vezax tank so casters can stay in range without moving.Heroism/bloodlust should be used after the first shadow crash after the saronite animus spawns.All DPS should switch to the animus and blow all their cooldowns to bring it down, as it has 12.6 million health and hits fairly hard.Every 1 and a half seconds it will refresh and increase a stacking shadow damage DoT that will overwhelm the raid once your healers can no longer heal through it.After about a minute and 30 seconds the stacking damage will wipe your raid.Your DPS must be especially careful once the animus spawns, if they are hit by a shadow crash, it will instantly kill them.

Your 3-5 idle and best raid healers should begin healing at around 15 stacks of the DoT. Shadow protection potions should be used at around 40, healthstones at 50, and you will usually wipe at 70 or 80.Abuse every single last mana-free proc you can get. Surge of Light, Omen of Clarity, etc. It can and will make a difference.All holy and discipline priests should channel Hymn of Hope for 1-2 seconds to get the 20% maximum mana buff. Whereas it will not give you 3% mana per second, your mana pool will still go up for the last few seconds of the animus being up. Divine Hymn should be used at around 50 stacks of the debuff

Once the animus dies it goes back to Vezax as normal. The DoT will disappear but the shadow damage debuff will remain. Since around this time all your healers will be sucking on empty fumes, your DPS must bring Vezax down as fast as possible before the tank dies.

During our attempts on this boss I've managed to understand what the reason for our failures were.

Our first and foremost main problem was DPS taking unnecessary damage. I emphasize again that you should do everything possible to minimize this. Have your ret pallies judge Light instead of Wisdom or Justice and hope it will heal through them it, saving your healers the trouble.

Secondly : DPS going out of mana before the Saronite Animus dies. Whereas getting Vezax as low as possible before the Animus spawns is important, it is even more important to ensure you have enough mana to blow up the Saronite Animus before you go out of mana.Our hunters and mages and warlocks would be winding down at around 15% of the Animus, and raid DPS would dip from 500k to 40k, and then it'd be about 8 seconds of that "FFFFFFUUUUUUUU" feeling before you all die.Use a medium to low DPM rotation instead of maximum DPS.

Comment by Aleom

As of patch 3.2 General Vezax has received a significant change in his encounter. these are the changes we noticed in the 25 man raid version when doing his Hard Mode.

his health has been reduced by at least 7 million possibly more I would have to double check.

He now only spawns SIX Saronite vapors instead of his usual EIGHT. This means that the Hardmode encounter and Animus spawn will happen much sooner in the fight, but because of the health nerf Vezax's health % should still be about the same when he spawns (somewhere below 15%. more if you're DPS is good)

The main trick now is that Vezax will still cast the normal amount of Shadow Crashes that he would on a normal length fight. And since this fight is now shorter by a significant amount this means his shadow crashes are cast VERY VERY FREQUENTLY now. Your ranged group that is used to moving out of standard and slow crashes will now have to be moving very quickly if not almost constantly. As such their DPS is going to drop. I would advise that they focus almost entirely on staying alive.

I believe the Saronite Animus himself has also received a health nerf of about 2 million but again, I would have to double check next week to see for myself.

I will copy/paste these notes in the Vezax info as well as the Animus info.

Comment by Voodoochild

This fight is maddening especially if you have people with slow reactions. Even after the nerf it can be a festival of wipes.

Comment by eazycheeze

Here's a video of us doing the 25 man I Love the Smell of Saronite in the Morning Achievement this week, 1080p with vent included.

Comment by Rihard

Did this on 25 recently with the following setup:

Prot WarriorRet PaladinPunch MonkShadow Priest

As the Ret, I used Seal of Insight with Glyph of the Battle Healer, along with wearing 4pc PvP set (the holy power generation works on damage taken during the encounter). Unfortunately Ret's new mana regen mechanic does NOT work on this fight, unlike how it did back then. Until the Animus spawned, I just stood there and autoattacked, using the holy power generated from my pvp 4pc for either TV or Word of Glory (with Eternal Flame), since neither costs mana. The shadow priest also held off on dps, just throwing out prayer of mending here and there. Once the Animus spawned, we burned it down and finished off Vezax.

I imagine this could be done with fewer players even, as long as they have decent self healing and don't have a mana bar. Overall, the damage taken is pretty low for today's standards, and you don't even have to interrupt the casts really.

Comment by smackthekids

Just solo'd 25 man today on Prot Warrior (doubt its world first but I've never seen anyone else claim to have done it).Prot spec but wear all DPS gear except Shield and however many trinkets it takes you to get to 500k+ HP (or swap trink for stam flask, and use all DPS trinkets. High crit and 500k+ HP are the goals here. Phase 1 interupt casts to get the 100% DPS increase, get boss down as much as u can. When the anomaly spawns, never interupt main boss unless u want to die lol. Dont freak when you get the Anomoly's stacking damage debuff, it stops at 99, and if you're over 500k HP'ish, 2nd Wind will heal you just fine. And the more damage the better Vengeance. Stack Anomoly and boss together and cleave, even though he takes 99% less damage, you never know how close (and its close) you'll get to berserk, plus more vengeance when ya got 2 bosses on ya! After this its a serious DPS race, pop ur cooldowns and say meow cuz its a tight enrage! Good luck!

Comment by Icemagic

Be aware that its the first 6 saronite vapors that you have to let merge. We accidently killed the first 2 and let 6 more spawn which did not merge. also no more spawn after that. we let boss hit enrage and wiped it up. Completed the achievement by letting the first 6 merge without fault.

Comment by Tcip

I just did this by my self. Very easy to do. Was doing this on my level 90 Night ElfDeath Knight, Frost spec item level 557.

Comment by Dsmo

When soloing the 25 man version this is currently the easiest way to get both achievements from General Vezax:

1. Clear all the adds in the room.2. Pull General Vezax.3. Do not interrupt his Searing Flames spell cast at any point in the fight. If left uninterrupted General Vazax will just stand there and cast it indefinitely. He won't even auto attack. Searing Flames was doing about 300 damage per cast to my 581 ilvl warrior.4. At this point you can go afk for about 3 or 4 minutes while the Saronite Vapors spawn. Don't kill them.5. Once enough Saronite Vapors have spawned they will form a Saronite Animus.6. Kill Saronite Animus and then proceed to kill the boss.7. Gratz with both achievements.